The contentious subject of the holocaust Jews, and whether they could have usefully been better armed continues, with many nay sayers. Ben Carson recently made a statement about that and almost immediately got shot down, mostly by anti-gun people who decided not to interpret his words accurately.

Some people live in reality, unpleasant though it sometimes can be. But other people live in a fantasy world, shaped by illusions that are unrealistic and potentially dangerous. As an example of people living in reality, take presidential hopeful Dr. Ben Carson. Carson, as usual speaking slowly and thoughtfully, stated on CNN:

I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed…I’m telling you there is a reason these dictatorial people take guns first.

Democrats rushed to condemn Carson, as did the Anti-Defamation League. It is a liberal organization that advocates for Jews as a sideline – not the reverse, as it was designed to be. The ADL declared:

Ben Carson has a right to his views on gun control, but the notion that Hitler’s gun-control policy contributed to the Holocaust is historically inaccurate. The small number of personal firearms available to Germany’s Jews in 1938 could in no way have stopped the totalitarian power of the Nazi German state.

But Carson did not say that if the small number of personal firearms had not been confiscated, the Jews could have resisted effectively. He said that if the Jews had been armed, they could have resisted more effectively. Only those totally disconnected from reality could deny this.

Granted, the German armed forces in World War II were among the most effective in world history. Still, of the six million European Jews murdered in the Holocaust, imagine that just 10% or 600,000 owned guns. If only 10% of these gun owners disobeyed Nazi orders to disarm all Jews, then 60,000 guns would have remained in Jewish hands.

Obviously, these 60,000 armed Jews could not have held out indefinitely against the vastly larger, better trained, better armed Wehrmacht. But how many troops would Hitler have been willing to divert from the front? And if he had weakened his war effort to further the Holocaust, how much sooner would Germany have collapsed – thereby saving the lives of many Jews and non-Jews alike?

How much sooner would Germany have lost the war if it had to contend with 60,000 armed Jews as a resistance movement? We can’t know, but we can guess. As a basis for our estimate, we can use the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

When the Germans took over Eastern Europe, most Jews were rounded up into ghettos. They were crowded into unsanitary conditions, causing many to die of disease. But this was too slow for the Nazis, so they began deporting the Jews to death camps. By 1943 this news leaked out, and the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland decided to rebel – and die on their feet rather than on their knees.

Accounts vary, but the Jews were armed with perhaps 59 handguns and nine bolt-action rifles. In contrast, the Germans were armed with submachine guns and machine guns, as well as mortars and flame throwers. Nevertheless, the Resistance inflicted casualties and forced the Germans to withdraw. Finally they had to call in artillery, tanks, and armored vehicles to reduce the ghetto to rubble.

Clearly, the Germans would rather have used these troops, artillery, tanks, and armored vehicles against the Russians, with whom they were engaged in a death struggle. But at first they couldn’t believe that Jews were defending themselves:

Another eyewitness describes the confusion in the German ranks: “There runs a German soldier shrieking like an insane one, the helmet on his head on fire. Another one shouts madly ‘Juden...Waffen...Juden...Waffen!’” [Jews...weapons!]

Polish sources list German casualties as about 300 killed and 1000 wounded. What is undeniable is that the Germans were delayed by at least a month in clearing the ghetto and deporting the remaining Jews to death camps.

Note what Joseph Goebbels, Nazi minister of propaganda, concluded: “It shows what the Jews are capable of when they have weapons in their hands.” As between Goebbels, who was in charge of the vast Nazi propaganda machine at the time in question, and the leaders of the ADL, who are in charge of laptops many years later, I choose Goebbels’ analysis of the situation.

But if quoting one of Hitler’s top associates is too repulsive for you, go to the website of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. Check out their thought-provoking publications and DVDs. World War II and the Holocaust were the most costly lessons in history. If we refuse to learn from them, what does that say about us?

Advocates of gun confiscation often assert that the Ten Commandments order us “without exceptions not to kill.” This is untrue. Biblical Hebrew, like English, uses two words – kill and murder. Murder is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being. The Commandment states, “Do not murder.”

The Hebrew Bible or Old Testament allows killing in self-defense and just war. It describes how animals should be killed for food. And the only commandment that is repeated in all of the first five books, which make up the Torah, is that murderers should be executed. It is interesting that misinterpretations of the Bible often further the interpreter’s political agenda – in this case, a liberal, pacifist agenda.

Those who favor strict gun laws also assert that “stand-your-ground” laws encourage people to shoot rather than talk out disagreements. This also is untrue. These laws allow people, mainly homeowners, to use deadly force to defend themselves and their families from violent attack. The laws say nothing about “disagreements.”

As an example of the difference, take Sarah McKinley. Eighteen-year-old Sarah was home with her three-month-old son. She lived in a rural community, and police response times were often long. Her husband was not with her – he died of cancer a week before.

She saw two men breaking in. She recognized one as a man who had been stalking her since her husband’s funeral, apparently looking for drugs in the cancer victim’s home. She gave the baby his bottle, then retrieved a shotgun and a handgun and barricaded the door. She phoned 911 and was told she could not shoot unless they came through the door. But the 911 dispatcher, who was a woman, wisely added, “You do what you have to do to protect your baby.”

Sarah was on the phone with 911 for 21 minutes, but the police still had not arrived when the men broke down the door. The first man, the stalker, came at her with a 12-inch hunting knife. She fired the shotgun, killing the man. His companion fled, quite possibly breaking the Olympic 100 meter record.

Would anti-gun activists have advised Sarah McKinley to “talk out this disagreement”? Do they believe that it was wrong to shoot the attacker before he stuck the 12-inch knife into the young mother and left her baby an orphan – if the child was lucky? Who knows? Perhaps they do believe that. And perhaps they would have advised European Jews to “talk out their differences” with the Nazis. After all, the Jews, like Sarah, were facing superior force.

And even if Sarah McKinley – and the European Jews – had resisted unsuccessfully and been murdered, is it not better to die on our feet, defending our families, than die as helpless, unremembered victims?

Unlike Umpqua Community College near Roseburg, Oregon; and unlike the Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado; and unlike Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut; and unlike the homes of the six million European Jews – the mobile home of Sarah McKinley was not a gun-free zone.

ell done sir. Aron Zelman was a good advocate for self defense. He started JPFO (Jews for the preservation of firearms) and call liberal anti gun Jews foolish. There is no question that if there had been well armed Jews, hitler would have had more trouble taking them. Warning for us.